This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred
Linda Cardellini knew something was up when a random stranger would shout “Strawberry Breeze!” as she was crossing the street. For David Harbour, it was the messages pouring in from friends — not the usual “great job!” an actor receives when a program is airing, but long blocks of text, paragraphs dripping with emotion. Jason Bateman was hearing from pals too, reporting the conversations they were overhearing at restaurants and bars.
And for “DTF St. Louis” writer-director Steven Conrad, it was his favorite bartender in Chicago telling a couple of patrons about how much she didn’t like this new show on HBO, the one with the acronym you wouldn’t repeat in polite company.
“At least she was watching,” Conrad says, laughing. “And it sounded like she was watching based on a recommendation, which meant somebody else was watching too. I took that as a good sign.”
“DTF St. Louis” was indeed watched, gaining viewers week to week as it aired in the spring. On the surface, it looked like a limited series straight out of the HBO playbook, a murder mystery driven by sex and midlife ennui. Floyd (Harbour) joins a hookup app looking for sex and winds up dead. His wife, Carol (Cardellini), has been having a kinky affair with weatherman Clark (Bateman). Meanwhile, Clark and Floyd strike up a deep friendship, easing their suburban loneliness.
But it turns out that these are not bad people. They just make bad decisions. And by the end we feel for all of them.
Nominated for 13 Emmys — including series; writing and directing for Conrad; and acting nods for Bateman, Cardellini, Harbour and Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday, who play detectives investigating Floyd’s death — “DTF St. Louis” became one of the year’s most talked-about limited series. Like the events in the show, it could have gone terribly wrong. How did they get it so right? We spoke to the principals. Grab one of the show’s signature Jamba Juices and settle in.
Harbour [also executive producer]: For a long time, “DTF St. Louis” was not the title. It was “Area Weatherman Charged With Murder.”
Cardellini: [Laughs] That’s different. I felt like I couldn’t tell people — my parents, my teenage daughter — the title. I kept telling them it was untitled. The other day I was at a school event, and a parent came up to me and said, “Oh, I watched your show, you know the one? Well, I can’t say it in front of the children.” And then she whispered in my ear, and I said, “Yes, I know that one.”
Conrad: I was 54 when I started to write “DTF St. Louis.” My friends are the same age, and I had seen the threat that middle age poses, the compulsion to make really poor choices at the cost of so much. It was endemic around my group of friends — failed marriages, kids go to college and marriages split up, impulsive decisions to cheat. That felt like a good place to start.
Harbour: The “DTF” title is a joke. It has nothing to do with the show. The DTF app is a red herring, setting up suburban noir and salaciousness. It looks like a Lifetime movie, but the payoff is optimistic in what it says about human nature.
Cardellini: My parents never did get back to me when they found out the title.
Harbour: The more intimate something becomes, the less people want to ask you.
Bateman: The thing I found beautiful, and also heartbreaking, was just how open and vulnerable these characters are and how little artifice there is in their lives. Floyd and Clark, these two guys are almost completely devoid of swagger. We’re in a country that really puts a premium on swagger, on faking it till you make it. And they’re incapable of that.
